“If you don’t like it, then tell me what’s really going on. Don’t hand me some bullshit line about liking sea glass but not being able to accept anything that costs over twenty bucks.”
“It’s not bullshit!” I tell him, and for the first time, I’m getting angry.
“It kind of is,” he answers. “And I’m getting damn sick of it. So tell me the truth. What do you have against my money?”
“Nothing!” I assure him. “I know how hard you’ve worked for everything you have. You deserve everything you’ve got.”
“Okay, then.” He eyes me skeptically. “If it’s not the money you’re upset about, then what do you have against me personally?”
“Seriously? Now you’re just being stupid.”
“Am I? I don’t think so. Because it has to be one or the other—you don’t like my money or you don’t like me. Nothing else makes sense.”
“I’m completely in love with you, Ethan. You know that.”
“Then I don’t get it, Chloe. If it’s not the money and it’s not me, what is it?”
“Your family bought my silence for three million dollars.” The words come out before I even know I’m going to say them. But it’s the truth and if we’re going to make this thing work, Ethan might as well know exactly what it is he’s dealing with. Exactly what it is he’s up against.
“They threw their money at me to get Brandon off the hook and it worked, just like they knew it would. I mean, I took it, right?”
“Your parents took it—”
“Yeah, but they weren’t the ones who had to go to the police station and recant their statement, were they? No, that was me. I’m the one who had to walk in there all alone and tell them I’d made the whole thing up. I’m the one who had to sit there and be threatened with being charged with filing a fake police report while your brother just walked away. And I’m the one who had to sign the non-disclosure agreement, promising that upon payment I would never speak of the rape in association with Brandon’s name again. And I never did, not until he showed up on your doorstep three weeks ago. But you already knew, so I guess it didn’t count.”
Ethan looks stricken when he reaches for me. “Baby, I’m sorry. I swear, I’ve never thought about it like that. If I had—”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.” But still I shrug him off. I can’t stand the idea of him touching me while I tell him just how low I sunk. Just how pathetic I was. “You’re not the one who sat there watching them hand your father a check for three million dollars. And you’re not the one who went home, climbed in the bathtub and tried so hard, so hard, to work up the nerve to slice your wrists wide open.”
“Jesus Christ. Chloe. Jesus Christ.” He reaches for me again and again I shrug him off. “You can’t tell me and then not let me hold you.”
“I’m okay.”
“I know you are. But I’m not. Baby, I’m not.” He looks like he’s going to try to touch me again, try to hold me, but at the last second he lifts his hand to the back of his neck and rubs at it instead. I’m not sure whether I’m grateful or devastated.
In the end, I figure it doesn’t really matter either way. I just want to finish this story. Just want to get it over with. “I was never strong enough to do it. I’d go to school every day, listen to your brother and his friends call me a whore and a slut. I’d fight them off in the stairwell when they groped my breasts or tried to shove a hand up my skirt. When they pushed me onto my knees and told me how much I wanted it. When they unzipped their pants and tried to make me—”
My voice breaks and I realize it’s because I’m crying. Again. Damn it. Why is there always more? More pain. More tears. More stupid, psychotic shit I’ve got to wade through because I was once an idiotic fifteen-year-old girl who made a lot of idiotic mistakes.
After I fell for Ethan, I thought it was over. Thought I’d moved past it, gotten over it. And now, here I am in the middle of a goddamn parking lot in fucking Napa Valley and it’s all right here between us again. Where it always is.
Where I’m desperately afraid it always will be.
I look down at the ground now, because I can’t tell the rest of the story if I’m looking at Ethan. Not this, after everything else. Not when I still don’t know which part I’m most ashamed of. The fact that I wanted to kill myself or the fact that I was too chicken to go through with it.
“Every day for a year, I tried. I got home, went upstairs to the bathroom, got out the straight edged razor I’d bought for just that purpose. And I’d try. I’d try and try and try until my arms were covered with shallow little cuts. Hesitation wounds, the shrinks call them. That was me, always hesitating. Never able to get the job done, no matter how hard I tried.”
I brush impatiently at the last stray tears sliding down my face as I wait for Ethan to say something, anything. He hasn’t said a word since that muttered, Jesus Christ, when I first started talking. I’m not sure what his silence means but I figure it’s probably not good.
Chapter Twenty
I’m not sure how long we stand there. Long enough for people to load a cart full of groceries into the SUV next to us and pull away. Long enough for the little girl sitting on the bench in front of the store to finish her ice cream cone. More than long enough for me to feel it as those pieces that had lined up so well last night get all mixed up again.
We wait and wait and wait.
I keep expecting Ethan to say something. For him to tell me that he understands, that it’s okay—or that he doesn’t and we’ve made a gigantic mistake. At this point, I’m not sure which of those would be worse. I just know that I can’t stand the waiting much longer. Not if I have any hope of staying sane.
He won’t even look at me, hasn’t let his eyes meet mine once since I told him I’d tried to kill myself.
Finally, I can’t take the silence any longer. “Ethan.”
His eyes jump to mine. They’re blurry and out of focus and goddamnit I must be crying again. Except when I scrub a hand across my cheek, it’s dry. That’s when it hits me. I’m not crying. Ethan is.
“Oh, baby, please. Don’t. Don’t do that.” This time I reach for him and he’s the one who flinches away. It slices deep. Not just the rejection but the knowledge that once again I’ve inadvertently hurt him. Rejected him.
“If you would let me, I would give you every penny that I have and every penny that I’ll ever make.”
“Is that what you think I want? Your money?” It’s like he hasn’t heard anything that I said.
“Not even a little bit. But it’s what I think you deserve.” He wraps one big, calloused hand around my neck and pulls me gently toward him. “It doesn’t matter how many times those little bastards called you a whore. It doesn’t make you one. And it doesn’t matter how many times you told yourself you were weak. You will never be anything but the strongest woman I have ever met.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t put me on some kind of pedestal—”
“I wish. I wish I could put you on a pedestal. I wish I could put you somewhere under glass, where I could keep you safe from all this shit you never should have had to deal with. I wish I would have known what Brandon was like a long time ago, wish I could have kept you out of his hands that night and every other one you had to put up with his bullshit.
“And I want you to know—I need you to know—that when I buy you a present, it’s not because I think that you expect it. Or that I feel like I have to do it to make you happy. Because that’s not it at all, Chloe.” He leans over, presses his forehead to mine. “It’s only that I love you and I want to give you the world.”
My throat is tight before he’s even half done with his speech and it takes everything I’ve got to keep from breaking down all over again. But he’s still sounding pretty shaken and I figure in any couple, at any one time, there’s only room for one of them to be losing their shit. And right now, that one appears to be Ethan.
And so I swallow a few times, wait it out. And onl
y when I’m certain that I can sound normal do I say, “You know, right, that I feel the same way about you? I think you deserve everything and it bothers me that you’re stuck with me. I’m neurotic and broken and so far from normal that I probably wouldn’t recognize it if it hit me over the head.”
“Stuck with you? Jesus, Chloe, I’m not stuck with you. I’m blessed with you.”
“Oh, Ethan, love, I think you’ve got that backward.”
“No. No, I don’t.”
He brushes his lips over mine and this kiss, our first kiss in what seems like forever … it’s a tapestry. A thousand stories and a thousand mistakes and a thousand glittering strands of light all threaded together to make something beautiful. To make something real.
“I love you,” he whispers against my mouth.
I laugh and if it’s a little soggy, there’s no one around but us to notice. “I don’t know why. I’m crazy.”
“Yeah, but you’re my kind of crazy, so …” He steps back then, starts to open the car door back up.
“I thought we were going grocery shopping?”
“Fuck grocery shopping. I’m taking you home.”
“Why? I mean, I’m still full from lunch, but presumably at some point we will want to eat again.”
“Yeah, well, this is where being rich comes in handy. Because I actually do have someone who’s job it is to stock up my kitchen.”
“But we’re already here. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, and this time it sounds like he thinks I really might be crazy.
“Please. I just want to do something normal for a little while. Something every other couple in America has to do.”
That sucks the argument out of him, just as I knew it would.
In minutes, we’re pushing a cart around the supermarket, picking up whatever strikes our fancy. Cherry Garcia ice cream. Brie cheese. Organic eggs. French bread. Cinnamon rolls. Tortellini salad. All in all, it takes about half an hour and goes very smoothly. At least until we get up to the cash register and I find myself staring at the tabloids as we wait our turn in line.
There’s a part of me that’s still locked in my head after our conversation in the parking lot and so it takes me a couple of minutes to actually read the lurid headlines I’m staring at. When I do, I have to grab on to Ethan to keep from falling as the whole world turns to quicksand around me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks even as he wraps a steadying arm around my waist.
I can’t speak so instead I just point at the magazines.
One of the headlines reads “Ethan Frost’s New Girlfriend: Portrait of a Gold Digger” while another takes the more subtle route: “Millionaire Playboy Ethan Frost Robs the Cradle … Or Is It the Other Way Around?” And if all that’s not horrifying enough, sitting right in the middle of all the magazines is one of the most popular gossip rags. It’s cover is a picture of Brandon, with the headline, “America’s New Sweetheart?” It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to vomit right in the middle of the conveyer belt.
Ethan gets us out of there within minutes. He bags the groceries for the checker and then all but throws his cash at her before sweeping me into the crook of his arm and bustling me out to the car. I’m so out of it at this point that I don’t even remind him to get his change.
Most of the ride home is a blur. I don’t notice any of the gorgeous scenery I waxed so poetic over during our ride to town. Don’t pay attention to the traffic that has gone from light to horrific in the space of a few hours. Don’t see or hear anything, really, except Ethan telling me over and over again how sorry he is that this is happening.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him each time he says it. But it’s just lip service. I’m not even sure what he’s saying, let alone how I’m responding.
Eventually the shock wears off, is replaced by anger. I know Ethan’s a famous guy and I know him having a girlfriend is news. But the endemic sexism of the headlines. The idea that Ethan is only with me for my looks and I’m only with him for his money is insulting as hell—to both of us. Not to mention pretty much the opposite of how things really are. I’d be a hell of a lot happier if Ethan had less money. If he was just an ordinary guy—and he knows it.
Who the hell are these tabloids to judge me based on the fact that I’m a student and an intern? I work for one of the most prestigious corporations in America and I’m applying to law school in less than six months. Surely that should count for something?
It doesn’t, of course it doesn’t. The truth rarely matters unless it can sell magazines. Nothing proves that more than a magazine calling Brandon Jacobs “America’s Sweetheart.”
We finally—finally—make it back to the house and Ethan parks the car before running around to my side to help me out. “I’m not an invalid,” I tell him as I get myself out of the car and up to the front door. “I really am fine, you know. It was just the shock of it, after everything we had just been talking about.”
“I know. And I’m so—”
“If you tell me you’re sorry one more time, I’m really not going to be responsible for my actions. But if it makes you feel better, you can carry in the groceries while I languish on the couch like a damsel in distress.”
“I’m good with that.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Somehow I knew you would be.”
I, however, have never been much for languishing, so as Ethan carries the bags in, I make quick work of putting them away in his state-of-the-art kitchen. I thought the kitchen in the La Jolla house was fancy, but this one is something else. Two stoves, a built-in grill, refrigerator and warming drawers not to mention huge double ovens. Napa is known as one of the food capitals of the world and I can’t help wondering if that’s why this kitchen is such a chef’s paradise. If it’s just part of the culture here.
And yes, I am well aware that I’m focusing on things like Ethan’s Sub-Zero refrigerator and state-of-the-art range because it keeps me from thinking about those tabloids. And about the fact that I’m once again being called a whore—only this time it’s not just my classmates who get to hear the insults. It’s the whole damn world.
When I’m done putting away the last of the groceries, I wander through the huge family room and down the hall, looking for Ethan. I find him in the back of the house, in the master suite. He’s running a bubble bath with my new lavender bath oils and the entire bathroom smells like a summer meadow.
“Careful,” I tell him, sliding my arms around his waist from behind. “You keep smelling this good, with your pretty face, someone’s going to think you’re a girl.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he tells me, tossing a quick grin over his shoulder. “I like girls.”
“I think I’ve heard that about you somewhere.” I press a few kisses between his shoulder blades, reveling in the way his whole body just melts at my ministrations.
“You okay?” he asks after a minute. He’s careful to keep his gaze focused on the running water while he waits for my reply.
“I’m fine.” And if it’s not quite the truth, well then no one needs to know that but me. “Besides, if I’m going to be your girlfriend, I’m going to have to get used to the barbs. There’re a lot of women who would give their favorite pair of Louboutins to be in my position.”
“Don’t you mean your shoes?” Ethan says with a quiet smirk.
“Oh, absolutely. My bargain flip-flops really are all the rage right now.”
He finally turns then with a laugh and wraps me up in a huge bear hug. And maybe it’s weak of me, but I can’t help burrowing in. Can’t help clinging for a couple of long, quiet moments.
“Why don’t you take a bath?” he suggests when I finally let go. “After that run last night, you’ve got to be sore.”
I am. And it’s that soreness that keeps reminding me that my headlong flight into the darkness really did happen just last night. With everything that’s happened since—good and bad—the argument that caus
ed me to run in the first place seems like it happened such a long, long time ago.
“I plan on it.” I start unbuttoning his shirt slowly, carefully. “Why don’t you join me?”
A quick hand on mine stays my fingers before they can take care of more than the first two. “I’d love to, but I have a couple of business calls to make. I want to make sure the buses got everyone evacuated and ensure that the plane landed safely in Vegas. But the calls shouldn’t take too long. When I’m done, I’ll make us a light dinner. Sound good?”
“It sounds very good. Though I’ll miss you when I’m soaking in this big tub all by myself.”
Ethan grins. “Yes, well, we’ll definitely have to remedy that before we head back to San Diego. I wouldn’t want you to be lonely.”
I laugh, as he intends me to, and then watch him walk away before slipping out of my clothes and sinking into the fragrant, steaming water. About a million different thoughts bombard me the second I start to relax, but I just let them flow over me, refusing to focus on anything more strenuous than trying to decide what wines I want to try out at the vineyard tomorrow. Definitely the pinot noir, since Ethan says it’s his favorite. But I’m a sparkly girl myself and I can’t help hoping he’s got a nice moscato for me to try, as well.
Exhausted after the events of the last two days, I lounge in the bathtub for nearly an hour, slipping in and out of a light doze. When the water finally cools, I reluctantly drag myself out of the tub and go in search of my hastily packed backpack.
I find it next to the bed, and a quick rummage through proves that I really was half asleep when I packed the thing. There are no pajamas, nothing at all for me to lounge around the house in. Instead, I’ve got a pair of jeans and a couple of blouses. A bright pink halter top rounds out my abysmally bad wardrobe choices.
After studying my severely limited options for a few seconds, I decide screw it. I’m exhausted and the last thing I want is to squeeze myself back into a pair of skinny jeans for the rest of the night. Instead, I rummage through Ethan’s drawers until I come across an extra-large T-shirt that’s been worn so much that most of the lettering on the back has come off. It feels incredibly soft to the touch and at the moment, I couldn’t ask for more than that. I slide it over my head, add a pair of underwear and consider myself dressed.